Chubby Checker

Chubby Checker, born Ernest Evans on October 3, 1941, in Spring Gully, South Carolina, is an American rock and roll singer and dancer who became one of the most recognizable figures in popular music through his association with dance crazes of the early 1960s. Raised in the housing projects of South Philadelphia with his parents, Raymond and Eartle Evans, and two brothers, Evans showed an early aptitude for performance. By age eleven he had formed a street-corner harmony group, and during his years at South Philadelphia High School he studied piano at Settlement Music School and entertained classmates with vocal impressions of Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, and Fats Domino. One of his high school classmates was Fabian Forte, who later achieved fame as the performer known as Fabian.

Evans worked various jobs after school, including at Fresh Farm Poultry in Philadelphia's Italian Market on Ninth Street and at the Produce Market, where he would entertain customers with songs and jokes. His boss at the Produce Market, Anthony Tambone, gave him the nickname "Chubby." Henry Colt, owner of Fresh Farm Poultry, was sufficiently impressed by the young performer to arrange, along with songwriter and Cameo-Parkway Records associate Kal Mann, a private recording session for American Bandstand host Dick Clark. After hearing Evans perform his Fats Domino impression, Clark's wife Barbara proposed the stage name "Chubby Checker" as a nod to Domino.

In December 1958, Checker privately recorded a novelty single for Clark in which he portrayed a schoolteacher presiding over a classroom of musical performers, impersonating acts including Fats Domino, The Coasters, Elvis Presley, Cozy Cole, and The Chipmunks, each singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Clark distributed the recording as a Christmas greeting, and the strong response it generated led Cameo-Parkway to sign Checker to a recording contract. Released as "The Class," the single charted at number 38 in the spring of 1959.

Checker introduced his version of "The Twist" in July 1960 at the Rainbow Club in Wildwood, New Jersey, at age eighteen. The song reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 twice — first in 1960, driven largely by teenage audiences, and again in a separate chart run in late 1961, following a performance on The Ed Sullivan Show watched by more than ten million viewers. By 1965, the song had sold over fifteen million copies and earned multiple gold discs from the RIAA. In September 2008, Billboard ranked "The Twist" as the most popular single to have appeared on the Hot 100 since the chart's debut in 1960, a distinction it retained in an August 2013 update of the list. The song had originally been recorded by Hank Ballard, whose band The Midnighters first performed the associated dance on stage, with Ballard's version peaking at number 16 on the Billboard rhythm and blues chart in 1959.

Checker's follow-up dance singles brought continued chart success. "Pony Time" became his second number-one single, and "Let's Twist Again" won the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Rock and Roll Recording. A 1962 duet with Dee Dee Sharp, "Slow Twistin'," reached number 3 on the national charts. Additional top-40 entries included "The Hucklebuck" (number 14), "The Fly" (number 7), "Dance the Mess Around" (number 24), "Dancin' Party," "Popeye the Hitchhiker," "Twenty Miles," "Birdland," "Loddy Lo," and a Christmas duet with Bobby Rydell on "Jingle Bell Rock." "Limbo Rock," for which Checker added lyrics and the trademark limbo dance to a prior instrumental hit by the Champs, reached number 2 on December 22–29, 1962, and became his last top-ten hit. He continued placing singles in the top 40 through 1965, with "Let's Do the Freddie" (number 40) marking his final entry of that era. Shifts in popular taste brought on by the British Invasion and the counterculture period ended his run of American hits, and Checker spent much of the latter 1960s touring and recording in Europe.

Throughout the 1970s Checker remained a prominent figure in Europe through television appearances and recordings, and briefly worked as a disco artist. A cover of the Beatles' "Back in the U.S.S.R.," released in 1969 on Buddah Records, reached number 82 and was his first chart appearance in three years. In 1971 he recorded a psychedelic album, initially released only in Europe under the title Chequered! and later reissued under several alternate titles, with all songs written by Checker and produced by Ed Chalpin, who had previously produced Jimi Hendrix. The album was not a commercial success. Later in the decade he recorded an album of re-creations of his greatest hits for producer Stan Shulman. In 1982 he returned to the American charts at number 91 with "Running." In 1988 he collaborated with hip-hop trio The Fat Boys on a version of "The Twist" titled "Yo, Twist," which reached number 2 in the United Kingdom.

In 1994, Checker appeared on Broadway in Grease. In July 2008, he reached number 1 on Billboard's dance chart with "Knock Down the Walls," which also entered the top 30 on the Adult Contemporary chart and featured Wishbone Ash's Roger Filgate on lead guitar. In 2009 he recorded a public service announcement for the Social Security Administration promoting changes in Medicare law. On February 25, 2013, he released the ballad "Changes" via iTunes, which reached number 43 on the Mediabase Top 100 AC Chart and number 41 on the Gospel Chart; he performed the song on NBC's Today show on July 5, 2013. In 2014, Checker was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame, and he was selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2025.